


Use Your Teeth

by Amelinda



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, M/M, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-28 13:28:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13904967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amelinda/pseuds/Amelinda
Summary: Abraxas is assigned the oddball, Tom, as his roommate. What follows is a lifetime of desire.





	Use Your Teeth

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally prompted to be drabble on Tumblr, but I just wanted to fic it because I love this rare pair, OK?

Mr. Riddle’s son was no one’s roommate of choice. Had the rooming committee honored Abraxas’s request, he would have known the close company of Milton Nott, the best steeplechaser entering the second-year cohort. Tom, the misfit, liked to read alone in the dankest corner of the library, and to disappear in the middle of the night. He would have perhaps gone unnoticed or dismissed if he were not clever, but his persistently high marks bought him no sympathy from most of the boys. They dubbed him 'Odd Tom.'

You see, the difficult thing about Tom was that, despite possessing his father’s handsome bearings, he was tragically peculiar. Abraxas neither envied nor pitied Tom. He thought him unpleasant, yes, but interestingly so.

“Care for a bag of crisps?” Abraxas asked lazily, digging through the mess of confectionaries he dumped from his latest care package.

Tom kept his nose in Darwin. “I’ll pass.”

“As expected,” Abraxas muttered. He picked a packet for himself and tugged the plastic sides. It would not budge. He pinched and pulled from different angles, slid his fingernails into the sealed opening, attempted to poke his finger straight through, but alas. “Do you have any scissors on you, Tom?”

This time, Tom bothered to lift his gaze. “Just use your teeth.”

Abraxas scoffed. “Pardon?”

“I know you’re not hard of hearing.”

“You’re suggesting I bite it open like a ravenous dog?”

Tom half-smiled. “Hand it over.”

Abraxas tossed the Walkers packet, one fair brow raised in interest. Tom popped the aerated bag with his incisor and tore open a hole. He did not appear like a ravenous dog, far from it, but he did not seem his elegant self either. Not like the boy whose voice was prematurely low, whose long limbs moved so fluidly.

Abraxas took back his crisps and set them aside. He was suddenly self-conscious of his rounded cheeks, and all too aware of Tom’s strong jaw.

 

…

 

You see, the difficult thing about Tom was that, unlike the other boys at Hopkins Academy, he was once poor. But Abraxas did not know this in fourth-year. When he later did discover the dark truth, he felt, all at once, he understood the mysterious behavior he both treasured and loathed. Tom lacked the trained talent Abraxas prided himself on—the piano, the violin, cricket, proper etiquette. Tom, instead, was a rogue talent. No knowledge of the sword, but sharp around the edges nonetheless.

It made him no less desirable to Abraxas.

“Raise your hand if you’re interested in applying for the Churchill Fellowship. I’ll note your names and sign you up for consideration.”

“Raise your hand,” Abraxas whispered to Tom, who showed no sign of movement.

“It doesn’t interest me,” Tom said simply.

Abraxas scowled. No one was better suited for politics than Tom. The talkers, the social climbers, they all thought they had it in them, but Tom? He was born for it. If Abraxas had Tom’s wit, his eloquence, he would attempt the scholarship in a heartbeat! What greater honor was there than to aid the Tories? The bottom-feeders had their crosshairs set on the foundation of their great culture, and it would be their duty, as sons of great men, to protect what they loved. But, passionate as he was, there was no place for Abraxas in politics; he was all that Tom was not.

“Don’t be silly,” snapped Abraxas. He raised his hand and cleared his voice.

“Yes, Mr. Malfoy? You’d like to be added, would you?”

“No, not me. Riddle.”

The professor snorted humorlessly. “And Mr. Riddle cannot speak for himself?”

Tom reacted slowly, deliberately. “My apologies. I would be happy to apply.”

 

…

 

In fifth-year, Abraxas discovered where it was Tom disappeared to all those years. The night sky was brilliant with things he could not understand. The grass beneath his neck reminded him of sacrifice.

“Part of the problem, you see, is that I’m not conservative.”

“Rubbish,” Abraxas said. “You are what you want to be.”

Tom chuckled softly. “Are you the net sum of your parent’s expectations?”

“With pride,” Abraxas responded stiffly. “And if I wasn’t, I could never be you instead.”

“The poet speaks again.”

Abraxas rolled his eyes. “What I _mean_ is that I couldn’t just fake it, like you do. Don’t you find it draining? Demoralizing?”

“No,” he said quietly.

Tom was so handsome this night, as he had always been, but somehow more so. And Abraxas, rising with confidence, knew he was not the chubby boy he once was. Both grew lean and healthy, though equally pallid. Tom was as dark as Abraxas was light. Few of their features could be said to look similar, but they gave the same impression: posh, to put it bluntly.

Abraxas thought of what all this meant and decided it was better to be dumb when he was young. Risks reflected unfavorably past a certain age. For now, for this space in time, beneath a patchwork of dazzling lights which didn’t care, he was free to act on the impulse he knew too well.

His lips were pulp between Tom’s teeth. Such a fervid response to the innocent gesture of a peck spread patches of red across Abraxas’s cheeks. The sweet and sentimental turned unnaturally vulgar. Abraxas tore back, gasping, staring at Tom as he was eclipsed by the moon. He tasted iron on his tongue.

 

…

 

Oxford and Cambridge were worlds away. Tom was accepted at both but chose the one which would not take Abraxas. This would perhaps haunt Abraxas to his death but he dared not speak of it, not in a café of all places.

Abraxas sipped his macchiato. “You’ve lost weight.”

Tom shrugged, stirred his tea. “Dining hall food isn’t much to my liking.”

“Your face is gaunt.”

“And yours is pointy.”

“You look like you haven’t slept in ages.”

Porcelain clattered, Tom’s cup splashing up. “Do continue insulting my appearance. It may satisfy whatever petty grievance you’re harboring against me.”

“I have no grievance,” Abraxas said nonchalantly.

“Spare me your lies.”

At a celebration the summer before, on the eve of Abraxas’s twentieth, liquor tightened their lips as effectively as it had loosened their belts. The consequence now was telling. In exchange for the slick, wet curve of long fingers, in exchange for the primal gratification of watching Tom watch him come, Abraxas compromised his sanity. He was too quiet then to remain quiet now.

“My grievance is this: _you are a liar_. You are a shameless liar. You never acted how you were meant to.”

Tom leaned in, narrowed his eyes. “And I have lied about what, exactly?”

Abraxas blushed. “You weren’t brought up in Little Hangleton.”

“I never said I was.”

“You never denied the assumption!”

“You never thought to not assume.”

Abraxas straightened his lips; tears would not help his cause. “You never told me where you came from.”

“And that makes me a liar?”

“Where do you come from?”

Tom looked away, down at his tea. He spun his spoon in it, and then swallowed a large swig. “A group home. They identified Father when I turned nine. Is the mystery solved, now?”

“What do you mean by that?” Abraxas asked, uncomfortably caught between incensed and bemused.

“Will I cease to be interesting to you?”

“ _What_?!”

“I know what I mean to you Abraxas. I am not the liar here.”

Abraxas could not respond for months.

 

…

 

But, you see, the difficult thing about Tom was that he was patient. He waited. Pursuit was his aim in all matters, except those pertaining to matters of the heart. He knew Abraxas would come back crawling, and Abraxas knew it, too.

Tom left for America sometime in between. Study abroad was all the rage with bored young men who knew only gray skies. When he came back, Abraxas was there, waiting.

They sped to the bedroom in haste. Tom bit into the zipper and slid down the metal. Two men, naked, in private, fucking for hours on end, because Abraxas had prepared himself (because of course he had). It would not matter if they awoke to stars or some somber overcast. They would leave, and they would marry, and they would return to each other. Tom was all that Abraxas was not, and Abraxas's craving could not be sated. Not on earth.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please leave review & kudos if you liked this! This is a rare pair but I really adore it, so I'd love to connect with other Tombrax fools like myself.


End file.
